Templates for Managers.

A curated set of 20 files for the person who actually has to write the review, run the one-on-one, and have the conversation — with no HR business partner to call and no per-seat platform to log into.

The hard part of managing is the writing and the conversations

Almost nothing on a manager's list is hard because the decision is hard. By the time the review form lands you already know the rating — you have known for months. What stops you is the blank box underneath it, and the knowledge that whatever goes in that box will be read by the employee, read by HR, and read again in a year by somebody who wasn't there. So it gets filled with the words everybody reaches for the night before the deadline: detail-oriented, great attitude, needs to be more proactive, has real potential — sentences that can't be checked, can't be repeated on purpose, and give the employee nothing to do differently on Monday.

The fix is behavior-based feedback: describe the work, not the person. A performance-review phrasing bank gives you 189 competency phrases (243 in all) organized by rating level — structurally different language at Exceeds, Meets and Needs Improvement — each printed with the specific count, date, artifact or consequence it obliges you to produce, plus a five-slot builder that assembles the summary paragraph. Ten of its rewrites are 10 free review rewrites (PDF, no signup), and it's worth reading how to write a review that holds up and how a bank compares to an AI review generator before review season starts. For the rating itself — weighted criteria per role, the distribution across the team, and a calibration read that catches a lenient or strict rater — the Performance Review & Calibration Workbook is the companion file. Decide the rating there; write the paragraph in the bank.

The paperwork is the easy half, though. The difficult-conversations script bank covers the fifteen conversations you actually put off — a first performance concern, attendance, a declined raise, a performance improvement plan, a termination, a layoff — each branched for the four replies you get, with the exact next line for every one, a stop-check naming when to bring HR in before you open, and the note to write within the hour. How to start a performance conversation walks the first one through step by step, the whole card for it is the free first-performance-concern script (PDF, no signup), and scripts vs. an HR consultant is the thirty-second test for which conversations need paid advice on your facts.

Between review cycles, the thing that makes review week a writing job instead of an archaeology job is a running record. A one-on-one kept in a 1:1 Meeting & Goal-Tracking Workbook logs each meeting, carries action items forward until they're closed, and flags who you're overdue to meet with — four lines per person a month, and the evidence is already there in March. Keep the meeting log where only you and HR can open it: notes on a named person's performance are an employee record, on paper as much as in a file. If the harder problem is what to ask once you are in the room, the 1:1 & Coaching Question Deck is 108 printable questions across twelve situations, each with the follow-up that makes it count; twelve of them are free on the twelve 1:1 questions card sheet, and what to ask in a one-on-one walks through the method. If you are weighing that against a subscription tool, see a question deck versus a one-on-one app. Point the whole team at the same quarter with OKRs in an OKR & Goal-Setting Workbook, instead of a per-seat performance platform.

Hiring and onboarding are the other two conversations nobody trains you for. A structured interview asks every candidate the same questions and scores them like-for-like, and an interview scorecard & question bank ranks your slate on evidence rather than on who interviewed best. Once the hire lands, a 30-60-90 plan maps their first three months into goals, owners and check-ins. And to know where your team actually stands ability by ability — for development, promotion, or the case for a hire — a competency matrix and a skills matrix put it on one grid, with a 9-box grid for the talent review.

If you were promoted last month, start before any of that. Everything above is a grid you fill in; The New Manager's First 90 Days Playbook is the one you read. It costs your week out properly — every standing obligation with a minute figure, totaled against the week you are actually paid for — and then works down what to hand back, ranked by how fast each hand-over repays the hours it takes to teach. Plus 62 listening-tour questions, and 30 first-90-days changes already sorted into week one, week six, day ninety, and not yours. The week-one questions are free and ungated as the First-Week Listening Questions guide; there's a walkthrough of what to do in your first week as a manager, and it's worth reading how a written method compares to a leadership course before you spend a training budget.

One caveat that matters more here than anywhere else on the site. These are templates and general management guidance — not legal advice, and not HR advice for your organization. What a performance-improvement plan must contain, how much notice a written warning requires, and what documentation supports a dismissal are set by national, state and sometimes local law, by your own handbook and contracts, and by any collective agreement you're party to. Take proper advice before you write any review that will support dismissal, demotion, a formal warning or a pay decision, or that touches a protected characteristic, a disability or accommodation request, leave, or a complaint an employee has raised.